Do bad experiences loom larger than good ones? The role of prior purchase experiences on the effectiveness of IS certifications

ABSTRACT

IS certifications are important sources for customer trust building in e-commerce. However, little is known about how their effect changes between initial and repeat purchases, despite many other aspects of e-commerce are customised to focal customers’ shopping history. In this study, we investigate how prior purchase experiences with the same vendor moderate the effect of IS certifications on purchase intention via customers’ trust in a vendor. We propose a research model based on Expectation Confirmation Theory and test our hypotheses using the Factorial Survey Method with a sample of 160 participants evaluating 480 scenarios. Our results indicate that prior shopping experiences moderate IS certifications’ effect, however, depending on quality and quantity of the experiences made. Most importantly, negative experiences decrease IS certifications’ influence on trust in a vendor. Our findings facilitate more refined theory-building efforts in IS certification research and help to guide e-commerce vendors in their IS certification deployment practices.

KEYWORDS:

• IS Certifications
• Expectation Confirmation Theory
• Factorial Survey Method
• Trust

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We do not report conditional indirect effect coefficients for the number of positive experiences as the interaction effect coefficient was found to be not significant.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [grant numbers BE 4308/4-1 and BE 4308/4-2].